Cost of Running

All prices below are very rough estimations, and not accurate in any way.

2 * Tier S1 App Service (CM and CD): $45/month

3 * Tier S1 SQL Database: $30/month

Tier C0 Reddis cache: $30/month

Azure Search, $250/month

There are some other minor costs, but roughly the monthly run cost for the installation is about $500. Interestingly the Azure search is half of that, and you can’t change the tier of Azure search to a lower tier once it’s deployed. There are cheaper tiers (as the size of current tier is fairly large), but no confirmation if it would work with a lower tier; and it would require you to manually change config files.

Summary

The installation is simple, you add in a few passwords, click “next” a few times and wait for 30 minutes. And it all works, publishing and all. It’s great for setting up a quick demo environment (if you don’t need xDB).

But at this point that’s what it is for, showing of capability.

The ARM templates Sitecore has published outside of the Azure Marketplace offer a lot more. And most likely, most Sitecore Production instances will require some level customization, so that is the route they will take.

Still, to be able to deploy a Sitecore instance with a click of a button is pretty cool and will make setting test environments a lot easier.

Will be testing next deployment from the ARM templates to see what the xDB looks like.